Glimpse of Borneo

by Anne Rothwell

The lush verdant countryside rolled past the train windows at a comfortable speed. We were on the return leg of a great journey on the North Borneo Railway, being hauled by a British Vulcan steam locomotive (for the train buffs). The attendant came round with our lunch in double-decker aluminium tiffin boxes, which we finished in time for our arrival back in Kota Kinabalu. Life was good!

We stepped off the train and set off along the platform, then suddenly, whoosh - I stepped in what I thought was a puddle, but turned out to be a deep muddy pothole. My foot shot in the air and I made a spectacular landing on my shoulder with a bang. I heard a crack, which I thought must be my watch glass hitting the ground. People all around were pulling me up before I was ready. Things went woozy and I thought I was going to pass out. As I stood there swaying, I realised that I couldn’t lift my arm at all. The crack turned out to be a break at the top of my humerus, near the shoulder. Someone took me to the hospital, where a specialist told me that, rather than put it in plaster, he recommended that I have an operation to insert a stainless steel pin. I agreed to this, especially when he said he’d got his qualification in Edinburgh. Only afterwards did I discover that he’d been in Edinburgh for a whole six weeks! However, I was treated speedily and successfully, then suffered a long mosquito-ridden night. Marven was allowed to sleep on the next bed in the quiet ward and when we pointed out the mozzies, instead of plugging in a deterrent or lighting a coil, the nurse just nodded and left us to it.

 The next morning I left the hospital as I didn’t intend to lose another minute of my holiday. We flew across to Sandakan, the former capital and got a boat across the Sulu Sea to the mangroves. From there we could see the Philippines, only 17 miles away. We passed an island where the Japanese had imprisoned women and children during the second world war, then spent a lot of time looking up in the trees for proboscis monkeys with their comical huge noses. We eventually found some, then realised that we’d spent rather more time than we’d intended and had to dash back over the water at great speed, our little boat bouncing up and down on the surface of the water, jarring my poor arm, but I was on too much of a high to care. The best was yet to come. We drove to Sepilok orangutan sanctuary. These beautiful gentle creatures are losing their habitat so rapidly that it’s heartbreaking. We went along walkways into the jungle to watch then for quite some time. Here was my real reason for coming to Borneo and a wonderful wildlife experience.

 First published in VISA 92 (Aug 2010)